People who are always vaporing about their own importance, and the value of their own possessions, are disagreeable. We all know such people: and they are made more irritating by the fact, that their boasting is almost invariably absurd and false. I do not mean ethically false, but logically false. For doubtless, in many cases, human beings honestly think themselves and their possessions as much better than other men and their possessions as they say they do. If thirty families compose the best society of a little country-town, you may be sure that each of the thirty families in its secret soul looks down upon the other twenty-nine, and fancies that it stands on a totally different level. And it is a kind arrangement of Providence, that a man's own children, horses, house, and other possessions, are so much more interesting to himself than are the children, horses, and houses of other men, that he can readily persuade himself that they are as much better in fact as they are more interesting to his personal feeling. But it is provoking, when a man is always obtruding on you how highly he estimates his own belongings, and how much better than yours he thinks them, even when this is done in all honesty and simplicity; and it is infuriating, when a man keeps constantly telling you things which he knows are not true, as to the preciousness and excellence of the gifts with which fortune has endowed him. You feel angry, when a man who has lately bought a house, one in a square containing fifty, all as nearly as possible alike, tells you with an air of confidence that he has got the finest house in Scotland, or in England, as the case may be. You are irritated by the man who on all occasions tells you that he drives in his mail-phaeton "five hundred pounds' worth of horse-flesh." You are well aware that he did not pay a quarter of that sum for the animals in question: and you assume as certain that the dealer did not give him that pair of horses for less than they were worth. It is somewhat irritating, when a man, not remarkable in any way, begins to tell you that he can hardly go to any part of the world without being recognized by some one who remembers his striking aspect or is familiar with his famous name. "It costs me three hundred a year, having that picture to look at," said Mr. Windbag, pointing to a picture hanging on a wall in his library. He goes on to explain that he refused six thousand pounds for that picture; which at five per cent. would yield the annual income named. You repeat Windbag's statement to an eminent artist. The artist knows the picture. He looks at you fixedly, and for all comment on Windbag's story says, (he is a Scotchman,) "HOOT TOOT!" But the disposition to vapor is deep-set in human nature. There are not very many men or women whom I would trust to give an accurate account of their family, dwelling, influence, and general position, to people a thousand miles from home, who were not likely ever to be able to